“Before me, Raphael. Behind me, Gabriel. On my right hand, Michael. On my left hand, Uriel. For around me shines the pentagram, and within me shines the six ray star.”
Once again, Tsuji made the sign of the cross, like she had at the beginning, and then she lowered her hand.
That seemed to be the end of it. I felt like I’d been shown a musical performance, or some improvised acting, and the silence afterward made me feel restless. I felt like maybe I ought to clap.
“Whew.”
Moments before I could act on that impulse, Tsuji took a breath and twisted her neck around. “Ahh, it’s been such a long time since I did this.”
“What was that?” I asked, lowering my hands which no longer had anything to do.
“LBRP—the Lesser Banishing Rite of the Pentagram. It’s the Golden Dawn’s most famous ritual, and also the simplest. I performed a banishing, that is to say an exorcism, in order to remove the influence of the spell that Urumi-kun cast on this room.”
“What spell? I didn’t do anything like that,” Runa protested, but Tsuji smiled at her.
“If you’ll pardon the expression, I’d say your renovations were a perfectly valid form of magic. You should be careful what you do with it.”
“Huh? How...?”
“But the more important thing is if it had any effect. What do you think?”
Tsuji retreated to the entrance, then surveyed the room. We all took another look around as well.
“Did something change? I feel like Tsuji-san’s ritual didn’t do anything.”
Runa was the first to speak her mind. Honestly, I felt the same. Tsuji’s performance had left an impression on me, but the room was as creepy as ever. I couldn’t imagine that the ritual had had any effect.
“Yep, I agree! It didn’t work!” Tsuji sounded rather chipper, considering we just told her that her ritual had failed. “Wow, you’re really something, you know that? Let me just say, I was totally serious there, but I guess the LBRP just isn’t enough to destroy the domain that you created, Urumi-kun!”
“I have no idea what you’re even talking about.”
“I’m telling you, this is super cool.”
While Tsuji was getting worked up, Toriko hesitantly raised her hand. “Umm... If you want to change the atmosphere in this room, I feel like there’s a simpler way.”
“Oh? What?” asked Tsuji.
“Why not just move that torso, or smash it?”
Tsuji grinned and pointed at Toriko. “So sharp! Yes, that’s right. That’s what you’d normally do. If you want to harm a space that was created with an intended purpose, you should just destroy the elements that make up that space. No need for any suspicious rituals. However...”
Tsuji placed a cautious hand on the torso, then effortlessly knocked it to the ground.
“Hey!” Runa protested. But Tsuji carried on.
“A space that was constructed with a negative purpose in mind won’t stop functioning easily. In fact, destroying it can sometimes make it stronger. You know, like when delinquents sneak into haunted spots and then deface them with graffiti. Their scribbles may seem out of place, but they don’t do anything to make it less scary, right? This is the same way.”
It was just like Tsuji said. Even now that the torso was on the floor, the room retained its creepiness. It felt like toppling it had added a hint of violence to the situation.
“Well, what if we cleaned up instead?”
“You really are sharp, Nishina-kun.”
Tsuji was full of compliments, but her tone was always teasing, so it was impossible to take any of them as genuine.
“You’ve actually got it,” Tsuji continued. “Cleaning and tidying up are the simplest forms of exorcism that we do in daily life. If we put this torso out with the trash, vacuum the room, put up some wallpaper in a nice, bright color, and install some stylish lighting, it’d completely change the vibe of this room.”
“Uh-huh...” said Runa. “Is that really good enough? If cleaning counts as magic, maybe my remodeling does too.”
“Yep, you can have confidence in that, Urumi-kun,” Tsuji said, grinning in the face of Runa’s sarcasm. “But if that was all it took, then there wouldn’t be what we call stigmatized property. No matter how much you pretty the place up, there are spaces where that can’t remove the underlying nastiness of them. That’s what exorcisms are for.”
“They’re just a way of making people feel better, aren’t they?” countered Runa. “I mean, that ritual just now didn’t do anything, now did it?”
“The thing is, practical magicians are always looking for results. When it looks like the magic hasn’t had an effect, we can’t just let it end like that.”
“Well, what do you plan to do next, then?” I asked.
Tsuji considered, then answered, “Well... I was initially planning to test a number of things, but now I wonder what I should do next. Maybe Peter Carol’s pentagram ritual... No, maybe it needs to be more abstract than that. Okay!”
Tsuji nodded to herself, convinced. “I’ve got it. I think I’m going to go with a real simple one.”
Having said this, Tsuji headed back to the center of the room, and we watched to see what she was up to this time. Tsuji took a deep breath, and then—started laughing out loud.
“Ahhhhh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!”
Everyone recoiled in shock. It was an explosive laugh that went from zero to one hundred in an instant. Tsuji kept on laughing in our direction. She clutched her belly, looking deeply amused, and went on roaring with laughter as though she was resolved to expel all of the air from her lungs at full force. I’d never seen a belly laugh like this before. I couldn’t have been the only one feeling overwhelmed. Runa, for one, had gone quite pale.
It went on for maybe a minute, then stopped as suddenly as it started. It was like she’d flipped a switch, from one hundred back to zero again.
“You okay? Urumi-kun,” Tsuji asked with a level of composure that had to be fake. Runa was covering her mouth with her hands, her face turned downward.
“Ah, her nose is bleeding,” Toriko observed. Blood dripped from Runa’s nose, ran down her hand, and fell.
“Sorry. So this is what happens, huh?” Tsuji approached and held Runa’s shoulders to support her. Sasazuka produced an antiseptic tissue from the pouch at her waist, and offered it to them.
“What...was that, just now? It made me feel sick...like I was gonna puke,” Runa, able to speak now, said as she held her nose with the tissue.
“You got hit with the effect of the banishment.”
“Banishment...”
“This one was effective. Whew, good to see, good to see.”
Come to think of it, the atmosphere of the room had clearly changed. The stagnant air had cleared, and the lights seemed brighter somehow. Even though, physically, nothing had changed...
“You’re telling us that was an exorcism just now, Tsuji-san? When all you did was laugh?” I asked, only half believing it.
“Yep. Because laughter has an incredible power to drive away demons. Any burst of emotion can work, but laughing’s way more fun than raging or crying.”
“Is it a question of fun?”
“You bet it is. Everyone who is into practical magic is a bit off in some way or another, so those who forget how to have fun turn into scoundrels in no time. Urumi-kun, are you all right?”
“I’m appalled... The whole time you were laughing like an idiot, it was ridiculously upsetting.”
“You thought it was you I was laughing at?”
This question made Runa look up, as if she’d had a moment of realization.
“The way you renovated this room, it was like you placed a curse on it. I had no specific target, and there was no malice involved, so I thought you’d be fine, but if I destroy it with you there watching, yeah, of course it was going to rebound on you a little bit. Sorry.”
“Could you stop talking nonsense...?”
“Well, we don’t have to go into the details. For now, I think it’s safe to say that my magic isn’t completely ineffective in a battle against the UBL. That good enough for you, Migiwa-kun?”
Migiwa bowed his head. “Thank you. With this we have successfully completed up through Phase 2 of the experiments we planned out in advance, so I believe that is enough for one day.”
“We’re done already?” I asked.
“Yes. Sasazuka-san, could you handle the rest?”
Sasazuka stepped forward and said, “For the rest of the day, my people will be training here, so the rest of you are free to relax. But before that...and this is hard to ask, but...” Sasazuka trailed off, glancing in Runa’s direction.
“Huh...? What is it?”
“The trick in this room has changed, so if you could return it to how it was before, for the benefit of our training...”
Runa’s eyes widened, as if she were questioning Sasazuka’s sanity. “Uh, well... It’s fine, I guess...”
“We’re much obliged.”
“You sure don’t go easy on people. Seriously.”
Runa walked over to the fallen torso. Then, after looking at it for a while, she lowered the hand that had been covering her mouth, and slathered the mannequin with blood from her nose.
“Is that good? Okay, I’m going to go wash my face now.”
Runa left the room, leaving behind an atmosphere that was suddenly sinister. All she’d done was add a splotch of blood, but it had been incredibly effective.
“Wow, she’s pretty amazing, huh?” Toriko said, completely defanged.
“Whew, such youth, such potential.”
I felt like Tsuji’s old man comments cheapened the atmosphere in the room ever so slightly.